BY THE EDITOR After you’ve mowed the grass, trimmed the hedges, marked your children’s verbal reasoning papers, walked the dogs, weeded the flowerbeds, polished the silver, dusted your books, done some office work, run out of things to put on the bonfire, struggled through the thoughts of Scruton with a claret, and watched all there is worth watching on Netflix and Amazon Prime, what the … Continue reading Lockdown Babies
BY JIM WEBSTER Now things are starting to unravel at speed. Looking at livestock, which is what I know best, sheep prices have tanked. In simple terms because like us the French and the rest of our customers are locked down, they’re not dining out and the amount of lamb they’re eating has dropped. Beef is the same. Butchers are struggling to shift the better … Continue reading From the Farming Front Line
BY THE GODS Dear World, So sorry that you have been inflicted with the Coronavirus but someone had to do something to alter the way you have been misbehaving of late: You were created in the image of the gods – not to act and judge like us. What right do you have to invent “wokeness”? That false prophet Thunberg, the Watermelon Communist, was getting … Continue reading Letter from The Gods
BY GARY MCGHEE Back in the day (nearly 30 years ago) I attended what was called an Encounter Group as part of an M.Ed I was doing at Nottingham University. It went thus… A group of about 25 students entered a large rectangular room which was laid with chairs in an elliptical spiral pattern – enough chairs for each student. There was no front or … Continue reading Herding Cats
BY NIGEL BEAN Have you heard of Michael Wittman? He was a much-vaunted German Tiger Tank ace of the Second World War. He was credited with ambushing and destroying 14 Cromwell tanks and 15 personnel carriers. Have you heard of the Tiger Tank grave yard at Hunts Gap or the mess left at Steam Roller farm in Tunisia where a pair of Churchills destroyed two … Continue reading Front Line Wisdom
BY QUENTIN PIGG In Britain, one has to go through the ridiculous charade of downplaying things which are obvious to many but spoken by few. If your assertion is yet to find its way into the digestive tract of the media, then to express it in the presence of so-called learned people will award you the label of a ‘reactionary’. It is this position that … Continue reading Orthodoxy Sniffers
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Watching opportunists using the Coronavirus crisis as a lever with which to implement Communism is simultaneously entertaining and dispiriting: Someone sent me this photo of the @c2c_Rail this morning from Southend to London, who are running a reduced service so everyone’s crammed on the train. This situation is utter madness, the government has to announce a universal basic income and call a … Continue reading Universal Basic Logic
BY JIM WEBSTER I’ve been trying to get my head round what is happening with the beef and lamb trade at the moment. As far as I can make out ‘cock-up’ is more likely than conspiracy. With the sheep trade it’s obvious that the buyers just stopped buying yesterday. It wasn’t just that prices plummeted, they weren’t even interested in buying at low prices. Given … Continue reading View From the Farm
BY EFFIE DEANS I think I saw the Killing Fields (1984) when it came out, but I really don’t remember. I may have seen it on video afterwards. It’s a film about the Cambodian genocide that took place between 1975 and 1979. I don’t remember the details of the film, but I remember the ending. John Lennon’s Imagine plays over the final scenes and the … Continue reading Imagine
CSM EDITORIAL What a strange world we live in! Who would have thought that we’d be laid low by a flu-like virus in 2020? These are extraordinary times and – although some think there has been an overreaction – we need now to look out for each other to get through this tunnel and into the light. Those who wondered how the country might unite … Continue reading Unity at Last?
BY JIM WEBSTER Whatever humanity is up to, the seasons continue to roll forward. The contractor arrived to put on the nitrogen. He made far less mark than I thought he would, the last few days have dried out our higher land nicely. Sal supervised him from a safe distance. Mind you that is as close as I got to him because the foot-trimmer was … Continue reading Splendid Isolation
BY QUENTIN PIGG COVID-19 has revealed the tragic futility of contemporary politics. Spirited efforts by sections of the Left to undermine each and every government response to the virus wearies even those who would ordinarily take an interest in Westminster proceedings. How is Parliament to be taken seriously if £330 billion of spending is to be criticised by the opposition as ‘not going far enough’? … Continue reading Hush, Cretins
The Editor of Country Squire Magazine interviews a German business colleague, Jürgen, who is stuck in his apartment in Shenzen in mainland China. While Jürgen is allowed out, he lives in fear of high-handed Chinese police officers and someone in his building getting Coronavirus. Jürgen is a made-up name – there have been police crackdowns on those in China telling the truth about the situation … Continue reading Interview from Coronavirus China
BY VICTORIA CHILDS Dear Dirty People, I am eighty-one years old and throughout my lifetime I have been told that being unhygienic is not a positive attribute. I would never think of picking my nose or eating a dropped jellybean off a train carriage floor. I take a shower or bath at least once a day and always wash my hands after going to … Continue reading Dear Dirty People
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I trust that You are well and that Your families are healthy too. I hope that You have had a good week and are planning to put Your feet up for at least some time this Sunday. Sometimes people ask me what my job entails. I mostly reply to them that my job is to make people pray. … Continue reading A Prayer for Us All
BY ANASTASIA CHOO I am British-born Chinese. I am the second-generation daughter of Hong Kong immigrants who came over to the UK in the 1960’s and set up a successful business. My sisters and I grew up in leafy Hertfordshire and attended state schools where we were subjected to the occasional joke but didn’t suffer too badly from racism as people took us for who … Continue reading Sneezes & Sinophobia
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine I trust that You are well and that Your families are thriving. As We approach the end of January how is the new year going for You? I am always amused by those who dismiss the power of prayer. The usual insult involves some comment about a “fairy god in the sky”. Christians and those other religions that … Continue reading A Prayer for Containment
